GET YOUR DEDICATED SNOW TIRES NOW !!!

All they would need to do to make TPMS more user friendly would be:
- Store 8 (or 10) TPMS sensors and let the driver switch between two sets of wheels in a menu
- Show the tire pressure of each sensor on a display

As it is now, TPMS is a huge hassle, and enough of a barrier to keep some people from getting winter tires/wheels. I think the benefits of winter tires outweigh the benefits of TPMS, which is why I run winter tires without TPMS.

Regarding cloned sensors, my Prime picks up the TPMS signal from my summer wheels that are stored in the garage, and the TPMS light doesn't come on until I've been driving for about an hour total each day. I imagine cloned sensors could cause even more confusion since the car wouldn't know which sensors it's getting a signal from.

 

Mazda seems to have done better. New sensors do need to be introduced, typically by a dealership visit, but from then on, owners can swap between two sets of tires, no special equipment needed:

 

A few European auto makers allow storing two sets of TPMS ID's in the vehicle ECU but that might be because the use of winter tires is required in some European countries. Toyota seems to be rolling out the display of all tire pressures as new models are introduced but whether or not they will do it on their less expensive vehicles is unknown.

TLMS isn't a hassle to me or my friends who have winter tires with pressure sensors. I gladly spend a couple of extra minutes per vehicle twice a year to do the reprogramming with an inexpensive handheld tool to get the safety benefit. I'd rather get an advance warning in snowy cold weather that a tire is going flat so I can get to a service facility before it does. Maybe TPMS seems mysterious to some people but it's really pretty simple.

It is normal for the vehicle TLMS system to not issue a low pressure warning until the vehicle has been driven a while . I store our extra wheel/tire sets fairly close to our vehicles in the garage but their pressure sensors go into sleep mode when stored and aren't/can't be recognized by the vehicles. The pressure sensors used on our Toyotas "wake up" due to tire rotation which means that only sensors on wheels mounted on vehicles are recognized.

 

Tapered lug nuts work well for centering the steel wheels I bought for the winter tire set up on my wife's Prius v - no need for hub rings. The non-tapered lug nuts for the alloy wheels that came on the car can't center the steel wheels. Get tapered lug nuts for your steel wheels if you don't already have them.

 

I will have hub rings for some Enkei wheels. My thought was to rebore the original steel spare wheel, but I can't find anyone to do it. Since the hub rings do not work well with them then maybe I need to consider runflats and just remove the spare.

moto g(7) power ?

 

My experience also. This is the difference between the lug-centric steel wheels and the hub-centric Toyota alloys.

 

Not my experience at all. The TPMS winter wheels are stored right now. When I put them on next month there is nothing extra to do to get the TPMS system working. Bolt & go. These are aftermarket sensors supplied by Discount Tire when I bought the wheels & tires.

 

Are the aftermarket TPMS sensors in your winter wheels cloned? How close are the winter tires stored in relation to your car at home when you have summer wheels with OEM TPMS sensors?

 

Here's a Canadian article on snow tires, aka winter tires:

Is the snow flake symbol enough to give you peace of mind for winter tires? | Driving

 

Here's a link to an article that explains how the accelerometers in sensors cause them to transmit information only during wheel rotation and how electronic TLMS tools can query sensors on wheels that are not rotating: TPMS Sensor IDs: Why, Where and When -

I store winter/summer wheels/tires in the same garage in which the vehicles are parked since the garage is sort of cave like under the house and temperatures in it are moderate all year. The garage in our previous house was above ground. Temperatures in it could vary by over 100 degrees Fahrenheit so I stored wheels/tires in a basement when they were not in use. A photo of wheels/tires currently stacked on MaxxHaul tire dollies is attached - excellent inexpensive tire dollies with lug nut storage compartments that can also be connected together and used as a creeper.

I reprogram vehicle ECU's immediately after doing the semi-annual changeovers. If I didn't, the low pressure warning in the instrument cluster would light up within a few miles of driving due to a mismatch between the ID's of sensors on the mounted wheels and the ID's stored in the vehicle ECU.

If it wasn't for the accelerometers in the sensors, their batteries would be exhausted very quickly instead of the 8 to 12 years that sensor batteries usually last.

 

A high percentage of Canadians live close to the US border. And just for an example, winters in my area are balmy, say compared to North Dakota.

 

Since you reprogram ECU at each tire change, the TPMS light in your car works fine even if you have a set of winter tires in your garage while you have summer wheels on. I don't have TPMS sensors in my winter set of wheels and during winter my summer wheels with sensors that are registered to ECU sit in the garage right next to where my car parks at home. I experience exactly the same thing as what @m8547 describes.

Yes, the car's ECU is sensing the existence of uninstalled but registered TPMS in the garage near the car when the car is at home. This causes the TPMS malfunction light to be unlit for the first ~20 miles. Once it comes on, it stays on. When I park my car at work with my winter wheels without TPMS, the light stays on immediately when I start the car after 8+ hours of parking, but when I come home and park my car near the summer wheels with the sensor that is stored in the garage, my cars TPMS light goes off. The concern m8547 raises is a legitimate one. If you have a set of "cloned" wheels stored near the car, now you have two sensors with identical ID registered to ECU that may report conflicting data.

 

I'm in Hollywood north.

 

Well, it's not supposed to work that way. I'll experiment when I mount our winter tires next month by not reprogramming the vehicle ECU immediately and will see if the vehicle ECU's recognize the sensors on the stored wheels when we pull into the garage.

 

I agree it's not supposed to work that way. The sensors should go inactive when the wheels are stored. Maybe a signal from the car is waking them up?

 

I alternate between stock wheels/tires with sensors, and corolla wheels/snow tires without. Through winter the stock wheels are in the garage, next to the car when it's parked. I have the TPMS warning light on. It maybe takes a while to wake up as I leave the garage, due to the proximity of the stock tires in the garage, but definitely see that light a lot.

Not sure about that.